Picture books for young readers, a think out loud

Working for Zoobean and having two kids under 4, I have a lot of time to encounter and think about picture books for children.

Here are a couple points that I've been trying to sort through:

1. The reality on the ground in our home is that we have a 4 year old reading material for kids several years older.
2. Reports from other parents and the New York Times suggest that "real chapter books" are the goal, picture books are for babies and non-readers. 
3. We've heard rumors that publishers are responding to a market for young readers and are supporting books that are age appropriate in content but complex enough for children reading above grade level.

The "early reader" books aimed at children in school learning to read are really hit and miss in content for our daughter. This is true even within the subset of "early reader" books that don't just patently suck in content and illustration, particularly the movie spin offs. So within the subset that are generally good, the animal stories are better than that school oriented stories. Given that most kids learn to read after they go to school, I understand why there are school oriented stories, but in our situation, because she's reading before school there are references she totally doesn't understand, sometimes to the point where most of the story is inaccessible. 

Another young reader who's 6 months older than our daughter has been headed toward Stuart Little, Charlotte's Web, that kind of stuff. I think whenever we get there, we'll have a better chance to see if there really are new books that are written for young, advanced readers. Thus far, those rumors are just rumors. At this point, just because our child might be able to read Harry Potter books, I don't think we're going to rush there. Just the other night, we had a tearful discussion about death, heaven, and such. At her age, she's just very literal and concrete. 

With that literalness and concreteness, my current strategy is to send her back into the regular population of picture books. This ends up addressing several issues. First, sometimes, she's just so enthralled with sounding out words, I'm not sure she's working through what's happening in the story. The pictures provide an anchor point for the content. 

Second, she recently announced that she only wants to read "Level 1" readers because they are for Pre-K and she's in Pre-K. The levels vary widely by publisher, but she's comfortably reading most Level 2 books and Level 3 books are simply taxing on her stamina, not her ability to read. So getting out of the "Level #" books will remove this issue. Also within picture books, there is a wide variation in the complexity of content and vocabulary, so there are certainly books that will work for her reading abilities and emotional development.

Third, some of the regular picture books are beautifully illustrated where this is rarely true for early reader books. Our daughter is very sensitive to beauty and I want to foster that particularly for her. But I think that even if she weren't, there's a missed opportunity for keeping our kids engaged in multiple dimensions of beauty if we rush her to picture-less books. She'll be there soon enough and for decades to come. 

Anyways, that's our current approach. With such limited data and experience, I don't want to prescribe this for every family, but I'd love to see more families graduate their new readers of any age from the controlled "early reader" books BACK to regular picture books rather than making a beeline for picture-less chapter books.